Suspected DUI driver flips car into cemetery, damages row of graves

Hollister residents are expressing their outrage on social media following a drunken driving crash that desecrated more than a dozen gravestones last week in Calvary-Sacred Heart Cemetery on Hillcrest Road.

The Hollister Police Department posted on its Facebook page a picture of a Honda sedan that had flipped onto its roof on top of a row of graves on Tuesday night.

More than 480 people commented on the post, many of them upset over the damage to their family members’ resting places. One said that the car was directly on top of her daughter’s grave. Another person expressed concern that historic wooden crosses from the 1900s on baby graves were irreplaceable.

The damage was caused by a driver with a blood alcohol content of .18, more than twice the legal limit, police said.

Police said the driver was arrested and will face restitution fees, noting in their press release:

There is no humor here. Only irony. … Because if people don’t get the message, they will end up in the cemetery, or worse yet, put someone else there. Impaired driving kills.”